We All Live Here

by Jojo Moyes

It is fair to say that the first couple of weeks of Gene’s stay are not an unqualified success. He sleeps late and rises like a bear out of hibernation, crashing into furniture and leaving wet towels and coffee spills in his wake. He seems incapable of looking after himself, beyond basic hygiene, and that is variable. He lives off coffee and cigarettes, cookies and potato chips. She has explained the washing-machine to him three times and every time he says, “Yes, yes, sweetheart, got it,” then boils his T-shirts into children’s sizes, or somehow manages to miss the spin cycle completely.

They know you’re hurting and it makes them feel powerful. It makes them forget what’s going on with their own lives. Because, honestly, they will all be having a crappy time individually.” “How would you know that?” “Because it’s only hurt people who hurt people.” She stares at him. “Celie, baby, you look around at people who are happy in themselves in their lives—they’re just busy living, having a good time. They don’t set out to be mean to other people. Their energy is going into other things. It doesn’t even occur to them to hurt someone else, or to try to make them feel small. In fact, they’re more likely to be building other people up. So you know what you’re going to do?”

They take off on the winding roads around the Heath, and she feels the car growling underneath her, the insistent pull of the torque, the steering wheel warm in her hands, and Jensen turns up the music, singing “I’m Every Woman” unselfconsciously and off-key, and Lila finding herself singing too, starts to get a whisper of what he means. There’s something about the cold blasting onto her cheeks, the exposure to the world around them, the music in her ears, her hair whipping around her face, that clears her head, scatters her endless looping thoughts. And then she is singing along, not caring who sees, laughing at Jensen’s made-up lyrics, the beauty of this ridiculous, unsuitable car.

There are periods of your life in which all that is really required is to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Lila wakes at six thirty every morning and does exactly this for sixteen hours before she climbs back into bed at ten thirty and sleeps a deep, exhausted sleep.

Our post adoption life

That is not going to be possible in Bill’s bedroom. There is now just a bare bed. All the accoutrements of Bill’s life—his rug, slippers, bedspread, wooden towel rail, his piles of reference books, 1970s Teasmade, and old magazines all gone, along with the rest of the furniture. Lila stands in the doorway and folds her arms firmly around her middle, gazing at the many layers of absence in the room. This is life at this age, she muses, a million goodbyes, and you never know which are the final ones. You just absorb them, like little shocks, trusting with each one that you’ll be able to keep moving forward.

“Your mother was not a fragile flower, nor was she easily bidden to do anything she didn’t want to do. She was a strong woman and she had agency. She made her own decisions.” She holds up a long, strong finger. “And before you say it, that doesn’t make her a terrible person either. Life is long and complicated, Lila, and we all make mistakes. What matters is what we do beyond them. But if you’re going to hold up your mother and your father as villains of the piece it will be misguided and it is ultimately you who will suffer.” “So you just forgave him. For shagging my mother.” “Of course. I chose not to be romantically involved with him anymore, but I will always be fond of him, and glad that we’re in each other’s lives. Have you never made a mistake?” Lila thinks about Jensen, about the awful discarded chapter. Jane seems to note her flicker of uncertainty. “Well, I hope, if you have, that you were forgiven. I hope the person understood that you’re only human. You can hang on to anger and bitterness your whole life. But all you really do is prolong your own pain. Just think about it. Put that burden down. For you and your daughters.”

“I guess—I looked at him tonight and I just felt released. I felt like I could let him go, because he probably wasn’t the right person for me anyway. And that just feels…weird.” “Good weird?” Lila thinks. “Maybe. I haven’t quite digested it yet.” She stretches her arms above her head. “You know, I’m realizing every day that I know nothing. I’m nearly forty-three and I genuinely know nothing.” “That’s the fun bit,” says Jensen. “Working it out.”